News & Publications

PSC Bids Farewell to Rich Brueckner

Saying Goodbye to Our Friend

We at PSC are deeply saddened by the passing of Rich Brueckner, leader of insideHPC. For many years, Rich drew on his industry-wide insights to communicate the impact of our field, its companies, and its contributors. Rich’s enthusiasm and optimism drove the countless interviews he conducted for insideHPC. For those of us who had the privilege of working with him, what we will remember most are his good nature and compassion, exemplified by his support for local animal shelters. HPC events won’t be the same without Rich and his iconic red hat. He will be sorely missed.

We would like to extend our deepest and most sincere condolences to Rich’s family, friends, and close colleagues. We will aim to rejoice in the positive impact he had and the memories of good moments together.

We invite all to join Rich’s friends and colleagues from the HPC community in Rich’s Celebration of Life, a Zoom meeting that will take place on Tuesday, June 2, from 4-6 pm EST. More information available here.

We can honor his life by continuing his legacy and supporting some of the causes that were close to his heart.

PSC COVID-19 Update: May 21, 2020

Making Data Lemonade

Lockdown status in each state versus number of COVID-19 cases, March 20-29, 2020. Visual shows the date of lockdown in each state by turning gray. The numbers on top of the states indicate the number of new cases from that state that day. Credit: Breanna Franchak, Pine Richland High School, and Cassidy Power, University of Pittsburgh.

COVID-19 Pandemic, Isolation an Opportunity for Pittsburgh-Area High Schoolers to Learn Data Science

It begins with a data-driven discussion of the national plan to reopen safely. Brian Macdonald, director of data science at a leading healthcare data analysis company, reviews the plan to phase out the quarantine based on continuous two-week decreases in COVID-19 cases in a given state.

His audience is not who you might expect. Listening in, via teleconference, are about 20 students from high schools across the Pittsburgh area.

PSC COVID-19 Update: April 1, 2020

PSC Resources Available for Urgent COVID-19 Research

With the nation—and the world—disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, we at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) would like to offer our wishes for safety and health for all. To do our part in protecting the country’s wellbeing, we have been working with a national alliance of high-performance computing resources called the COVID-19 HPC Consortium. As part of this effort, computing time on our Bridges and Bridges-AI platforms is being allotted to urgent COVID-19 computational research. By making these resources available at no cost to scientists, we hope to support the development of new treatments to aid people who have contracted the virus and to limit its spread.

Head Injury Study on Bridges Validates NASA Safety Testing

Simulations of the two most popular types of physical crash-test dummies—called “anthropomorphic test devices,” or ATDs, in the trade (left)—as well as a Human Body Model (HBM), a computer-simulated human being (right), experiencing a straight-down collision in a spacecraft seat.

Feb. 13, 2020

Designing safety restraints for a spacecraft is much more difficult than designing them for automobiles. Injuries that are tolerable after a car crash can prevent an astronaut from exiting a capsule that’s just landed in the water. Also, unlike in a car, impacts are far more likely to come from any direction. Since an Earthward-bound spacecraft crashes every time—each Earth landing is actually a crash—NASA has adopted an extremely low-tolerance policy toward even minor injuries.

PSC Recognized for 10th Year in HPCwire Awards

16th Annual HPCwire Awards Given to Leaders in the Global HPC Community

Nov. 18, 2019

For the 10th year, PSC has been recognized in the annual HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards. HPCwire, the leading trade publication in the high-performance computing (HPC) community presented the awards at the 2019 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC19), in Denver, Colorado. The awards recognize achievements among the top academic and business leaders in the global HPC community. The list of winners were revealed at the SC19 HPCwire booth, and on the HPCwire website.

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Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

PSC is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Established in 1986, PSC is supported by several federal agencies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry and is a leading partner in XSEDE (Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment), the National Science Foundation cyber-infrastructure program.